Thursday, June 11, 2009

Kindergarten Quotes

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. - Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. - Albert Einstein

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means. - Albert Einstein

As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it. - Albert Einstein

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. - Albert Einstein

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. - Albert Einstein

I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts. - Albert Einstein

The search for truth is more precious than its possession. - Albert Einstein

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. - Albert Einstein

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. - Mohandas Gandhi

We cannot be speakers who do not listen. But neither can we be listeners who do not speak. - Mohandas Gandhi

Find purpose, the means will follow. - Mohandas Gandhi

Satisfaction does not come with achievement, but with effort. Full effort is full victory. - Mohandas Gandhi

Speak only if it improves upon the silence. - Mohandas Gandhi

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. - Socrates

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. - Socrates

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. - Isaac Asimov

Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field. - Isaac Asimov

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. - Galileo Galilei

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself. - Galileo Galilei

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. - Plato

I would teach the children music, physics and philosophy, but the most important is music, for in the patterns of the arts are the keys to all learning. - Plato

When you make the finding yourself — even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light — you never forget it. - Carl Sagan

The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. - John Dewey

Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain. - John F. Kennedy

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. ~ Malcolm S. Forbes

Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. -- Doris Lessing

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. — Edmund Burke

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. -- Albert Einstein

A mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations. - George Santayana

All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. - Pablo Picasso

1) What are the main philosophical themes that run through these quotes?2) If you had to pare this list down to the 5 quotes most reflective of your philosophy, what would they be?3) What quotes would you add to the list?

3 comments:

Some of the themes I see common among these quotes: thinking, discovery, education, 'beingness' ...

Quotes that best reflect my philosophy:o Speak only if it improves upon the silence. - Mohandas Gandhio Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. - Socrateso The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. - Isaac Asimovo A mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension. - Oliver Wendell Holmeso The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations. - George Santayana

Some additional favorites of mine:

o Thinking is the soul talking to itself. - Platoo The real journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscape, but in having new eyes. -- Marcel Prousto When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. - John Muiro Reading and writing float on a sea of talk. - James Brittono The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. - Platoo The fastest way to teach a child to read is to teach them to write. - Mem Fox

I love your additional favorite quotes. I love quotes. They are the "sound bites" of written language. They have "sticking" power. I think that "sticking" power comes from being able to say so much in so few words, from being able to create multiple meanings with the same set of words, and from being able to apply those meanings to many situations. I find that when I go back and look at quotes that I had seen a couple of years ago, I find new meanings and new applications (probably because my perspective has changed).

I too will answer the reflection questions I posed, but I am waiting for others to have a chance to respond first. I think of your added quotes the one that caused me to reflect the most was Marcel Proust's. I think that if we ever "discover" how to fix the woes in our educational system, it will not be from a new "magic bullet", but come from looking at our system with "new eyes". I believe the answers are in front of us, we just have to look at them in a new "light".

5 most important to me:1. Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain. - John F. Kennedy2. Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. - Albert Einstein3. The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. - Isaac Asimov4. Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. - Thomas H. Huxley5. Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. -- Doris Lessing

Some additional quotes that I have come across this summer:• We see things not as they are, but as we are. -the Talmud• ...memory is the residue of thought. - Daniel Willingham• Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena. - Vaclav Havel• It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. ---Edward de Bono

Welcome to our Kindergarten Group Blog!

Please feel free to participate in our conversations (anyone can comment on our posts). If you would like to be added to our group, so that you can post your own thoughts, please e-mail me at zack.allen@moffatsd.org and tell me a little bit about yourself. The more, the merrier.